Wrong Move

1975 road movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A wandering writer meets some new friends and travels around with them for a bit.

This slyly strange road movie contrasts with Wenders' Alice in the Cities, the first of a "road trilogy," in a few ways. Most striking is that it's in color. I missed the black and white cinematography, to be honest, although the opening overhead shot with rain droplets collecting on the camera lens was lovely.

Second, there's not anything sweet about this one. Rudiger Volger plays the writer in this, too, but he's got a very different character in this one. They're both writers, and they're both drifting around, but there's something jerky about this Wilhelm figure.  The other characters aren't exactly great people. There's a stalking poet who, when he does get a chance to share his gift, blathers about sperm from a member. There's a sex-crazed actress. There's a guy who communicates far too much through a harmonica rather than language, and he's got a horrible secret. His traveling companion is a mute acrobat, and I guess she's ok unless it's a guilt-by-association thing. Even extras are a little nasty in this one. The travelers pass a fighting couple at one point, and there's a crazy guy yelling at them from a window, calling them pigs and rambling about planes racing through their heads. The exceptions are the suicidal widower the characters spend some time with and a street performer rocking an accordion and wearing a gigantic bell contraption on his or her head. The former delivers a soliloquy about loneliness that was stunning.

And the lengthy soliloquy reminds me of a third difference between this and Alice. This movie is very talky, and the ideas don't often have a lot of space to breath. There's a lot of talky narration from Volger's character, and lengthy conversations only almost take us to ideas that feel complete. Wrong Move tends to slowly ramble, kind of like its characters. I probably prefer that to a movie that spells everything out though.

Robby Muller also did the cinematography for this one, and there's one terrific moment involving a pair of trains where Volger is watching a woman and we briefly see his reflection in the shot with the woman.